The purpose of hiring two people isn’t just to do twice the amount of work. Two people can complement each other, creating a team which is better than the sum of their parts. Even two people with the same job title are never doing exactly the same work, and this matters in determining how much value they’re adding to the firm. I think this works against the point you’re making in this passage. Do you account for this somewhere else in your post, and/or do you think it affects your overall point?
My claim is that having one person with the skill-set of two people is more useful that having both those people. I have some sense that teams are actually rarely better than the sum of their parts, but I have not thought this very much. I don’t account for this and don’t think it weakens my overall point very much.
But if we can’t really even measure talent to begin with, what are we even talking about when we talk about talent? What do you mean when you say “talent”?
I mean something vaguely like “has good judgement” and “if I gave this person a million dollars, I would be quite pleased with what they did with it” and “it would be quite useful for this person to spend time thinking about important things”.
It is difficult to measure this property, which is why hiring talented people is difficult.
I agree I use the word talent a lot and this is unfortunate, but I couldn’t think of a better word to use.
My claim is that having one person with the skill-set of two people is more useful that having both those people. I have some sense that teams are actually rarely better than the sum of their parts, but I have not thought this very much. I don’t account for this and don’t think it weakens my overall point very much.
I mean something vaguely like “has good judgement” and “if I gave this person a million dollars, I would be quite pleased with what they did with it” and “it would be quite useful for this person to spend time thinking about important things”.
It is difficult to measure this property, which is why hiring talented people is difficult.
I agree I use the word talent a lot and this is unfortunate, but I couldn’t think of a better word to use.